Free Event Feat. Black Women Artists, Simone Leigh, for Black Lives Matter
By: Molly Tracy Aug. 22, 2016
On Sunday, July 10, over one hundred black women artists gathered at the New Museum to form a collective force underground, known as Black Women Artists for Black Lives Matter (BWA for BLM). Simone Leigh, the New Museum's current artist-in-residence, whose exhibition "The Waiting Room" is on view through September 18, convened this group in response to the continued inhumane institutionalized violence against black lives in the U.S.
The group will hold a free public event in solidarity with Black Lives Matter at the New Museum on September 1 from 4:30-8:30 p.m. This evening will feature collectively organized healing workshops, performances, digital works, participatory exchanges, displays, and the distribution of materials throughout the New Museum Theater, Lobby, Fifth Floor, and Sky Room. BWA for BLM focuses on the interdependence of care and action, invisibility and visibility, self-defense and self-determination, and desire and possibility in order to highlight and renounce pervasive conditions of racism. Simone Leigh's "The Waiting Room" is the inaugural exhibition in the Department of Education and Public Engagement's annual research and development residency and exhibition program that foregrounds the New Museum's year-round commitment to community partnerships and to public dialogue at the intersection of art and social justice. Since its founding in 1977, the New Museum has been committed to presenting the work of diverse artists and viewpoints, championing art as a vital social force.Through September 18, 2016
Fifth Floor Gallery "Simone Leigh: The Waiting Room" marks a new chapter in artist Simone Leigh's ongoing exploration of black subjectivities, particularly those of women. In her work, Leigh (b. 1968, Chicago, IL) demands that the concerns, roles, and rights of women of color be recognized as central, rather than pushed to the margins. For her exhibition and residency at the New Museum, the artist considers the possibilities of disobedience, desire, and self-determination as they manifest in resistance to an imposed state of deferral and debasement. Whereas discourses of patience, pragmatism, and austerity often underscore political debates surrounding the failures of public health care and related conditions, Leigh finds inspiration in parallel histories of urgency, agency, and intervention within social movements and black communities, past and present. Troubling the notion of separate narratives, she implicates violent, institutionalized control and indifference as the conditions under which forms of self care and social care can become radical or alternative. Focusing specifically on an expanded notion of medicine, "The Waiting Room" references a wide range of care environments and opportunities-from herbalist apothecaries and muthi [medicine] markets in Durban, South Africa, to meditation rooms and movement studios-and involves a variety of public and private workshops and healing treatments that the artist refers to as "care sessions." Blurring the distinction between bodily and spiritual health, or between wellness and happiness-and, in doing so, countering the perception of holistic care as a luxury good-Leigh has convened practitioners who view social justice as integral to their work. The project also takes into account a history of social inequalities that have necessitated community-organized care, traditionally provided by women, from the United Order of Tents, a secret society of nurses that has been active since the time of the Underground Railroad, to volunteers in the Black Panther Party's police-embattled clinics that were active from the 1960s to the 1980s. "The Waiting Room" suggests that creating a space for wellness may require both the making of a sanctuary and an act of disobedience against the systemic enactment and repudiation of black pain. The exhibition is curated by Johanna Burton, Keith Haring Director and Curator of Education and Public Engagement; Shaun Leonardo, Manager of School, Youth, and Community Programs; and Emily Mello, Associate Director of Education. It is accompanied by a broadsheet designed by Nontsikelelo Mutiti who also created the graphic identity for Black Women Artists for Black Lives Matter. SUPPORT
"Simone Leigh: The Waiting Room" is made possible by support provided by the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation and the Toby Devan Lewis Emerging Artists Exhibitions Fund. Artist commissions at the New Museum are generously supported by the Neeson / Edlis Artist Commissions Fund. Artist residencies are made possible, in part, by Laurie Wolfert. Further exhibition support is provided by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Endowment support is provided by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Skadden, Arps Education Programs Fund, and the William Randolph Hearst Endowed Fund for Education Programs at the New Museum. Special thanks to A Blade of Grass. ABOUT NEW MUSEUM
The New Museum is the only museum in New York City exclusively devoted to contemporary art and is a center for exhibitions, information, and documentation about living artists from around the world. From its beginnings as a one-room office on Hudson Street to the inauguration of its first freestanding building on the Bowery designed by SANAA, the New Museum continues to be a place of experimentation and a hub of new art and new ideas. For more information visitnewmuseum.org.
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